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httel~ational Journal fbr Philosophy of Religion 40:85-99 (October 1996) �9 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed 01 the Netherlands.

One short sleep past?

ROBERT T. HERBERT Department o f Philosoph.~; University o f Oregon, USA

This paper concerns the notion that we shall live again after our death and dissolution. Philosophers have argued that this is not logically possible because, h o w e v e r closely they m a y resemble us, no beings arising after our death and disolution could be identified with us. Arguments supporting this denial will be critically examined. First, however, I will here set forth an account o f (pre-mortem) human beings that, though in m y view the only correct one, seems to support and even to require the anti-resurrectionist stance I will oppose. This account is non-dualist, so that no lingering 'soul substance' is available to ground claims identifying post-mortem pretenders with human beings w h o have died. It seems, then, that if correct a non- dualist account o f human beings insures the logical incoherence o f any thought or hope or doctrine we m a y have o f a life after death - or, at any rate, o f a life after death and dissolution.

The non-dualist account to be presented here is not that o f dualism's tra- ditional oppenent, materialism. The view embraced is both non-dualist and non-materialist. But h o w can both dualism and materialism be avoided? Must one not hold a human being to be either a b o d y and a soul or a b o d y without a soul? To see how both these traditional accounts can be avoided, consider first a debate that mirrors the dualist-materialist controversy. Instead o f the nature o f human beings it concerns the nature o f ordinary physical objects such as rubber balls, apples, bits o f wax, and pieces o f chalk: and the 'substance' whose presence is in question is material, not spiritual.

The 'dualist' in this controversy holds that objects are comprised o f two kinds o f thing, sensible properties and the substances that underline those properties and insure an object's identity through all sensible change. Descartes' bit o f wax whose substance maintains the bit's identity through its heat-induced change o f properties is o f course a dualist conception. The opposing 'materialist' denies that objects are comprised o f two kinds o f thing: instead they are c o m p o s e d only o f sensible properties with no sub- stances underlying them. William James, who takes this view in Pragmatism (Lecture Three). held that the notion o f an underlying substance must be abandoned, that sensible properties, therefore, do not inhere in a substance,

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that instead they 'adhere or c o h e r e . . , w i t h e a c h o t h e r ' (James' italics). A piece o f chalk (James' example) is, therefore, to be identified with its coher- ing sensible properties, not (as in the 'dualist' vision) with a substance stuck about with, or clothed in, its sensible properties.

This disagreement as to the nature of ordinary physical objects mirrors the controversy between dualism and materialism over human beings. In both, the presence o f an indiscernible substance is affirmed by one side and denied by the other. But, more importantly for the purpose at hand, there is also an unexamined a g r e e m e n t between the Cartesian and the Jamesian, which likewise mirrors an agreement between dualist and materialist.

In setting forth their views about the nature o f pieces of chalk or bits o f wax, both sides conflate the concept s e n s i b l e p r o p e r t y with the concept p h y s i c a l o b j e c t - in other words, both sides reify sensible properties. This is revealed in the language that both resort to: sensible properties are for Descartes like clothing and for James like mosaic stones. Having swallowed this camel o f reification, the disputants then strain at the gnat o f an underly- ing substance that 'must' (or 'need not') be present to support such curious items o f apparel or building material. If only they had noticed that their shared assumption about sensible properties was a conceptual monstrosity, they would have found here no bone o f contention: if there are no clothes to wear, there can be no question of whether there is or is not a wearer.

Concerning the nature of human beings also, there is an assumption shared by the disputants, the dualist and materialist. They assume that a human being's physical side or aspect is an object. As the Cartesian and Jamesian reify the sensible properties o f (say) a piece o f chalk and then debate whether those properties taken together are the chalk or whether instead they merely clothe it, so the dualist and materialist reify an aspect o f the human being and then debate whether the resulting 'thing' is the human being or is instead (with the 'mind' or 'soul') only a constituent o f the human being. Such dialectic is roughly analogous to agreeing, disastrously, that the facets o f a cut diamond are really, so to speak, its siding and then debating the pseudo-question whether the stone just is a mock-up o f facets or is instead a facet-structure housing an indispensable inhabitant, a diamond- substance.

The nondualist-nonmaterialist view embraced here is that George wears the trousers. That is, it is not the part o f a human being's mental and physi- cal aspects to be reified so that they, and not the h u m a n being himself, are the real subject o f attributions of (say) mentation and physical size - as though 'George's mind [or brain] is puzzled' c o r r e c t s 'George is puzzled', and as though 'George's body is grotesquely fat' is a host and 'George is grotesquely fat' its parasite and not, rather, the other way about. To take 'George's body' or 'George's mind' rather than 'George' to designate the

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real subject o f attributions would be like so taking such pernicious fictions as 'chalk-properties aggregate' and 'wearer o f chalk-properties clothes', rather than the perfectly plain 'piece o f chalk'. Indeed, to do this is to trans- form 'George's b o d y ' and 'George's mind' into such fictions.

With this in mind one can respond to two objections. The first is this: 'Unlike the sensible properties o f pieces o f chalk, human bodies already are, to employ the legal term, r e s c o r p o r a l e s - like one's pipe and one's bowl. Thus, the dualist-materialist debate over whether human beings possess or instead just are bodies does not grow from the seed o f a conceptual con- fusion so identified; there is no such confusion here'. The second objection also denies the presence o f such a confusion: 'When we die what remains o f us is a body: our b o d y is viewed b y the bereaved, our b o d y is buried. This confirms the first objection's observation that human bodies are not fictions o f conceptual confusion but a genuine counter in the debate between dualism and materialism. The b o d y present at death is o f course also present in life, when we are a b o d y animated b y a soul or else instead a living body.'

Both these objections deny the confusion that generates them. Regarding the first, to assert that human bodies are r e s c o r p o r a l e s - as if it were n o t after all George, the human being himself, w h o wears these trousers - is to make o f 'human bodies' the pernicious fiction already identified. Regarding the second, to proclaim that what remains after death is a human b o d y - as though it were not indeed the human being himself lying dead - is, again, to transform 'So-and-so's b o d y ' into the same fiction; it is to reify a human being's physical side or aspect, as a bit o f chalk's sensible properties are done by James or Descartes. - Concerning our principle that George wears the trousers, it may, incidentally, be well to observe h o w Wittgenstein embraces it in P h i l o s o p h i c a l I n v e s t i g a t i o n s . There he writes, 'To have an opinion is a state. - A state o f what? O f the soul? O f the mind? Well, o f what object does one say that it has an opinion? Or M r N.N. for example. And that is the correct answer' (section 573).

Under the nondualist-nonmaterialist account sketched here, human beings seem to stand no better chance o f living after death and dissolution than a piece o f chalk does o f existing after being worn a w a y to dust. Indeed, it might be thought that the chalk's chance is better. Its particles, one might suppose, could be painstakingly reassembled and stuck together in their former positions to produce the original stick o f chalk, whereas human practicles might no longer be available for reassembly, having b e c o m e the particles o f others. It seems clear, however, that in neither case could reassembly yield the original items, but at best could produce only a second stick o f chalk, a second human being, c o m p o u n d e d o f a first's dust. Indeed, the hopelessness o f regaining the original seems deeper in the case o f the human being, since reassembling the chalk dust w o u l d presumably yield a

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stick precisely o f chalk, while it is at least doubtful that in the other case a being precisely human would result: 'adult' creatures who have grown through none o f those Shakespearian 'seven ages' that make up a man's 'strange eventful history', but instead have been instantly frankensteined from human particles hardly qualify as human, much less as human beings who have died.

But does the foregoing nondualist-nonmaterialist account o f human beings really entail that our living again after death and dissolution is logi- cally impossible? If human beings can be conceived as creatures who, 'one short sleep past . . . . wake eternally', whose 'strange eventful histories' include a period o f sheer nothingness, then our nondualist-nonmaterialist account implies no such logical impossibility. There are, however, formidable argu- ments against 'gap-inclusive human beings'. The present paper examines these arguments and finds that they fail to establish the incoherence of 'gap inclusiveness', thus suggesting that the nondualist-nonmaterialist account o f pre-mortem persons carries no implication that our living again after death and dissolution is logically impossible.

Speaking o f 'identity in general', Thomas Reid claims that it 'supposes an uninterrupted continuance of existence'. He supports this impressively by what he says next: 'That which hath ceased to exist cannot be the same with that which afterwards begins to exist, for this would be to suppose a being to exist after it ceases to exist, and to have had existence before it was pro- duced, which are manifest contradictions. Continued uninterrupted exis- tence is therefore necessarily implied in identity. ~

Reid's argument seems easily exemplified. A lakefront cabin is built on the site o f one destroyed earlier by fire. The destroyed cabin is not the same one as the present cabin. To be the same one, (1) it would have to remain even though it has burned to the ground, and (2) the present cabin would already have to have been in place before being built. Since (1) and (2) are or imply manifest contradictions it seems that, for such 'beings' as cabins at any rate, a j u d g e m e n t o f numerical identity over time implies the being's continued uninterrupted existence during the period the j u d g e m e n t con- cerns. The j u d g e m e n t 'This old building is the cabin where I spent happy summers as a boy' appears to imply the cabin's continued uninterrupted existence through the intervening years.

Reid makes it clear that he means this doctrine to apply to himself, main- taining that his thesis concerning identity in general finds no exception in personal identity. ' M y personal identity', he writes, 'implies the continued existence of t h a t . . , thing which I call m y s e l f ' .2

Compelling though the doctrine seems, questions arise: What kinds of beings does the doctrine apply to; or, in other words, how much can Reid's

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phrase 'identity in general' rightly be thought to embrace? Is it really a manifest contradiction 'to suppose a being to exist after it ceased to exist' or 'to have had existence before it was p r o d u c e d ' ? What counts as ceasing to exist, as beginning to exist, as continued uninterrupted existence?

Pursuing the question o f the doctrine's scope, let us consider its possible application to our pains. Can a pain - for example, a headache - that a person is n o w suffering be the same one that person had yesterday? Reid himself answers negatively (that 'the pain felt this day is not the same indi- vidual pain which I felt yesterday '3) without bothering to consider if the sufferer was able to gain relief in a f e w hour's sleep. One would expect Reid to hold that if the sufferer suffered without surcease through the night, his headache today is the same one he had yesterday. Instead, Reid denies that 'identity in its proper sense' applies to our pains at all. ~

What this denial comes to is not clear. If it means that affirmations o f identity over time o f such entities as headaches are unintelligible, this seems mistaken. Affirming that one still has the same headache would surely make sense in certain circumstances. On the other hand, if Reid's denial means that, though intelligible, these affirmations do not necessarily imply contin- ued uniterrupted existence, the claim is a bit perplexing. There seem to be cases in which interruption o f a headache amounts to termination followed b y another headache ('No: the headache I had yesterday went away; today I ' m paying the piper for last night's carouse') and, on the other hand, cases in which interruption is simply not taken into account - cases in which a f e w hours' fitful sleep, for instance, supports no objection to the affirmation that ' I ' v e had this same headache for days'. Thus, the claim that affirma- tions o f the identity over time o f headaches do not imply continued uninter- rupted existence seems incorrect about some cases, although correct about others.

One might attempt to enlist the claim's use o f the word 'existence' to mount the objection that headaches exist only as or while they are felt, with the consequence that the same headache lasting for days is really a series o f individual headaches. But this ignores the fact that a single headache might consist of periods of intense suffering relieved b y brief episodes of sleep, thus allowing it to exist even while not being felt - that with regard to their identity over time, though some headaches (in their existence) are compara- ble to a spell o f feverishness, in which no interruption is possible, others (in their existence) are like a case o f intermittent fever, which o f course includes interruptions in feverishness.

Supposing, then, that some headaches are indeed interruption-inclusive, let us ask whether these falsify the doctrine that identity 'supposes an unin- terrupted continuance o f existence'. One response might be that they do falsify" it because, though their existence is interrupted, their identity over

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time remains unaffected. It m a y be objected, however, that from a head- ache's being intermittent it does not follow that the headache's existence is interrupted, any more than from one's illness's being intermittent fever it follows that the iUness's existence is interrupted. Cases o f such headaches and such fevers seems to support rather than falsify the doctrine that iden- tity supposes an uninterrupted continuance o f existence. The existence o f a case o f intermittent fever, for example, has 'uninterrupted continuance' at least as surely as the existence o f a cabin or o f a human being.

Indeed, in the intermittent, interruption o f existence seems quite incon- ceivable, as it does also in the intermissive. A twenty-minute intermission following the performance o f the first act o f a two-act play yields no reason to identify what follows the intermission as another performance. The play's performance includes, and thus its existence persists through, the intermis- sion or interruption, s

It seems, then, that Reid's doctrine applies to cases that at first might appear to be outside its scope. But such cases m a y be only what L o c k e referred to as 'modes', the term (along with 'relation') he applied to all things other than substances. 6 If the identity of modes like intermittent fever and headache and intermissive performance 'supposes an uninterrupted con- tinuance o f existence', what about substances like lakefront cabins and their owners, shoes and ships, cabbages and kings?

Perhaps the answer that the identity o f substances, too, involves the same supposition is obvious. If this is the same cabin I summered at as a boy, it has continued to exist from that day to this; if this is the same head o f cabbage y o u bought three days ago, your purchase was not sliced up for slaw and eaten. Also obversely: if that earlier cabin ceased to exist, this is not the same one I summered at, and if the cabbage y o u bought was eaten, this one is not that same head. It seems that the identity o f substances, like that o f modes, supposes uninterrupted continuance o f existence.

Here the general form o f our central question arises. Though it is clear that Reid's doctrine applies to substances (without exception, let us suppose), can there be a substance w h o s e existence, though it has uninterrupted con- tinuance, nevertheless accommodates a hiatus, a break, a lacuna, a gap - as there are modes whose continued uninterrupted existence accommodates intermittence or intermission? An affirmative answer to this w o u l d mean that the substance's identity w o u l d remain unaffected b y the gap since, being gap-inclusive, the substance's existence would continue uninterrupted by it.

To explore this question, let us consider the case o f a mythical substance, the phoenix. This bird o f wonder, as Shakespeare called it, after living for some five hundred years, b u m s itself up and then rises from its ashes with renewed vigor to live through another long period o f life. Do we have here the case of a substance whose existence continues uninterrupted? One m a y

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wish to answer negatively, for the case appears to be like that of a cabin destroyed b y fire, with a cabin then built in its place - the case o f a sub- stance's ceasing to exist, followed b y a substance's coming to exist. To those taking this view it will make no difference that the phoenix is said to rise from its o w n ashes, whereas the post-fire cabin certainly does not, for they will see the reduction to ashes o f any substance, mythical or real, as its ceasing to exist. They will insist that in the phoenix we do not have the case o f a substance whose existence continues through a gap o f death and disso- lution. And unless they abandon the doctrine that 'identity supposes unin- terrupted continuance o f existence', they will be prepared to add that we have, instead, the case o f two substances, the existence o f one ending in fire, that o f the other beginning in ashes - 'the phoenix' being not one bird having a singular existence that persists through dissolution, but rather a series o f birds, perhaps with a unique means o f producing offspring.

This is not the modern conception o f the phoenix. The modern conception is indeed that o f one bird whose existence spans its incineration and subse- quent rising, a substance whose uninterrupted continuance o f existence accom- modates a gap o f death and dissolution.

A tough-minded objection to this conception, however, is that mythical substances do not yield lessons concerning real substances. Fantasies employing the literary device o f time travel entertain by inducing a suspen- sion o f disbelief in something that is actually conceptually incoherent. Similarly, 'the phoenix' is a case o f disguised nonsense that would charm the beholder into buying the incoherent notion that a substance's existence can continue after it ceases, by getting him to ignore the truth that a sub- stance's dissolution ends its existence.

The crux o f this objection is the last-mentioned 'truth' that a substance's dissolution ends the substance's existence. This seems to be borne out in the following conversation about a real substance imagined by Peter van Inwa- gen. 7 'Is that the house o f blocks your daughter built this morning?' 'No, I built this one after 1 accidentally knocked hers down. I put all the blocks just where she did, though. D o n ' t tell her.' Van Inwagen's point is that if sub- stance x is assembled from its elements by one person and substance y (not assumed numerically different from substance x) is assembled from the same elements in the same order b y another person, substance x and substance y are not numerically identical; so, though van Inwagen ever so carefully places each block in the same position it had before, his house and his daugh- ter's are not the same one because they were not made by the same person.

Van Inwagen's imagined conversation also seems to illustrate m y objec- tor's 'truth' that the dissolution o f a substance terminates its existence. In accidentally knocking d o w n his daughter's house o f blocks, van Inwagen accomplishes its dissolution into its elements, terminating its existence -

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in consequence o f which his careful duplication can only bring to exist a numerically different structure, a new house of blocks.

Let us allow that in knocking d o w n his daughter's house van Inwagen ends its existence. It m a y seem, then, that what is true o f the girl's house o f blocks is true o f any real substance: its dissolution ends its existence. It may seem that m y objector's 'truth' is indeed true, and true o f all real sub- stances.

Consider, however, the case o f a stage set that is disassembled for re- moval to the next town, where it is reassembled for the next performance. The set may be such that, in being struck, it is as clearly reduced to its ele- ments as the girl's house o f blocks is; so if the latter is a case o f the dissolu- tion o f a substance, the former must be also. But is dismantling such a set terminating its existence? No; it continues to exist, struck to its elements and packed away, ready for shipment to Canterbury. M a n y cases illustrate this logic: a machine disassembled to its simplest parts for cleaning and then reassembled, illegal weapons completely stripped down for secret trans- port and later put together again, and so on. In each case, existence con- tinues uninterrupted b y a period o f dissolution. Each yields the same lesson: 'The dissolution o f a substance ends its existence' is not universally true.

It may be objected, however, that these cases do not involve thorough dissolution, the resulting elements being insufficiently simple. If the stage set were burned to ashes rather than struck, the machine and the weapons melted d o w n rather than disassembled, then their dissolution w o u l d end their existence.

The point is well taken. The set's reduction to ashes, the machine's to molten metal, is a dissolution that terminates the existence o f these sub- stances. But even when dissolution is understood to be thorough in this way, it is not clear that these cases teach a universal truth. Specifically, there is the bothersome phoenix, w h o s e continued existence seems to accommodate a dissolution as thorough as the incinerated stage set's. One may wish to insist that our conception o f the phoenix is such that, h o w e v e r thorough the bird's dissolution in flames, its existence is not terminated.

But h o w is this to be understood? Does it mean that the bird's existence continues in the form o f ashes - as the dismantled stage set's existence con- tinues in the form of elements packed up for shipment? No; this w o n ' t do, o f course. Substances reduced to ashes do not continue to exist as ashes, and so if a substance reduced to ashes does perchance continue to exist, it does not do so as ashes. The myth describes the phoenix as rising from its ashes. This might be taken to indicate that the ashes form up as the bird, suggesting to an incautious reader that they must s o m e h o w be a phase o f its existence, so that, when it was incinerated, the phoenix continued to exist as its ashes. The phrase is better understood as indicating that the bird materi-

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alizes on its ashes to live anew, a process that leaves the ashes untransmo- grified and the reader free o f a nonsensical thought. It is true that one may visualize ashes changing into bird without inferring that the bird had existed as those ashes, but the temptation to infer it is there. Let us not think that after incineration the phoenix continues to exist as an ash pile. To avoid temptation, let us think that during its existence the phoenix repeatedly rises to life, leaving countless piles o f its ashes like so many abandoned nests.

But if it is nonsense to say that a substance reduced to ashes continues to exist as ashes, there seems little hope o f understanding the idea that the incinerated phoenix continues to exist, or that its dissolution does not end its existence. If the phoenix's 'continuing to exist as ashes' will not do, then, since nothing but ashes remain, no mode o f existence seems available in terms o f which understanding is possible.

To investigated this, let us consider again the case o f a 'temporal entity': specifically, a performance o f a two-act play whose acts are separated by a twenty-minute intermission. During the intermission nothing is happening on stage; the actors are in their dressing rooms, the house lights are up, the stage is dark, the curtain lowered, the audience milling in the lobby. But if someone asks whether the performance is in progress, the correct response may be, 'Yes, it is'. For the questioner may not be asking whether the per- formance is presently in intermission, but whether it has begun, or has not concluded. With this fact about the logic o f intermissive temporal entities, one can generate an artificial perplexity that helpfully mirrors our difficulty concerning the phoenix: An artificial philosopher complains, ' I f the perfor- mance of act one has just concluded, nothing is going on in terms of which it is possible to understand the foregoing affirmation. Asserting that the per- formance o f the play is in progress, while acknowledging the empty stage, the lowered curtain, and so on, is surely to make a pronouncement that is, after all, unintelligible.' If one n o w seeks to remedy this "difficulty" by looking for some activity that the first act's performance (despite having concluded) c o n t i n u e s a s in order to account for the fact that the play's per- formance is in progress, one will o f course be barking up the wrong tree. The absence o f activity on stage constitutes no reason to deny the present existence o f that temporal entity; it is, at least in part, what constitutes the entity's intennissiveness.

These considerations suggest a response to one who sees no hope o f making sense o f the phoenix. The person sees no possibility o f understand- ing that the bird's incineration does not terminate its existence, for follow- ing its death nothing remains for it to exist as. The response suggested is that to suppose that something must remain for it to exist as is to impose the wrong sort o f requirement. It is like the artificial philosopher's requirement that there be some activity that the first act's (concluded) performance con-

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tinues as, if the play's performance is in progress. In this case the right sort o f requirement derives from the concept o f a temporal entity that is inter- mission-inclusive. Deriving the requirement amounts only to gaining a clear recognition (1) o f intermission-including temporal entities such as, for example, certain dramatic, musical, and athletic performances, and (2) of the fact that the differing logic o f intermission-excluding temporal entities (e.g., performances o f one-act plays) should not be imposed on them. With this two-fold recognition, one sees there is nothing perplexing in the notion o f a temporal entity whose existence continues uninterrupted by its twenty- minute intermission, for one is free of the inclination to seek (but fail to find) the gap-filling activity required by that differing logic.

To one perplexed by the phoenix because there seems no possibility o f understanding that the bird's incineration does not terminate its existence, the response might now continue thus: 'You are laboring under the illusory requirement of a logic o f substances that is alien to the case of the phoenix. That is, y o u are supposing the necessity of (and so look for and fail to find) something remaining after incineration for the phoenix to exist as, because you do not acknowledge the notion o f a mythical bird o f wonder whose existence spans many deaths and incinerations and, in failing to acknowl- edge it, allow an alien logical requirement to insinuate itself - just as the artificial philosopher fails to recognize the notion o f an intermission-inclu- sive temporal entity and, in that failure, allows the perplexity-engendering intrusion o f an irrelevant logical requirement.'

Earlier in this paper the following question was posed: Can there be a substance whose existence, though it has uninterrupted continuance, never- theless accommodates a gap? In the phoenix we seem to have such a sub- stance. Its existence continues uninterrupted by its periods o f death and dissolution and, to emphasize the irrelevance o f any residue during these periods, let us add: by its periods o f non-existence. To say that the phoe- nix's existence continues uninterrupted by its periods o f non-existence will perhaps seems to involve antilogy. But it does so no more than does saying that although a play's performance is in progress (has begun and has not concluded), it is not in progress (is in intermission).

But here an objector argues: The logic o f myth, like that of dreams, is notoriously elastic. In a dream a man puts on his trousers and finds to his surprise that they are much too small. He takes them off and sees they are no larger than an eight-year- old's. Nevertheless he puts them on again, and this time they fit perfectly, just as he had expected they would. In a myth three deities kill a giant and form the world from his body; his flesh becomes the land, his blood the oceans, his disintegrated brains the clouds, and so on. So, to the ques- tion whether there can be a real substance whose thorough dissolution

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does not terminate its existence, the case o f the phoenix provides no reli- able basis for reply. In dreams and myths substances often undergo things not possible to the real; so even if the phoenix's existence can be said to continue uninterrupted b y periods o f the phoenix's death, dissolution, and non-existence, this seems quite irrelevant to the case o f real birds, actual cabbages, and non-fictional kings.

Let us address this objection insofar as it concerns non-fictional kings (and other real folk), thus raising in its specific form the central question o f this essay: Can a real human being's existence continue uninterrupted by a period during which the human being is dead and has undergone a dissolu- tion so thorough that nothing o f him remains? Some will answer that his existence continues uninterrupted if only his death occurs, but that if in addition he undergoes thorough dissolution, his existence ceases: a human being's existence ends in smoke and ashes with his cremation, or in daisies blooming bravely with his reduction to humus, or in invigorated cannibals with his digestion by them, or in a certain milkiness with his dissolution in a maniac's vat o f acid, or . . . .

Despite its supposed irrelevance, the case o f the phoenix suggests the following response to this. None o f the dissolutions just described is more complete than the phoenix's reduction to ashes. Yet that nothing (relevant) then remains o f the bird evidently constitutes no reason to deny that its exis- tence continues, spanning its period o f non-existence and its subsequent new life. That its existence does so continue expresses a feature o f the notion or concept o f the phoenix. It seems, then, that a human being's reduction to ashes will constitute a reason to deny that his existence continues only if the notion or concept of a human being contains no such feature. Many, of course, will firmly maintain that the concept o f a human being is free o f any such phoenixity. But others relying on certain religious texts will wish to maintain that the promise o f a general resurrection implies that the concept o f a human being, like that o f the phoenix, is the concept o f something whose existence encompasses both a dissolution without remainder and a rising to new life. This position assumes the truth o f Reid's doctrine that identity, including personal identity, supposes an uninterrupted continuance o f existence. But Reid's doctrine is one that seems impossible to reject in any case. Furthermore, against a Flewian skepticism maintaining that because human beings do not survive dissolution, a future race purporting to be our resurrected selves can at best be only imitations of us, Reid's doc- trine yields a position o f advantage. To such a septic the response can be:

Yes, it is quite true that human beings do not survive dissolution. Never- theless, if human beings are to be raised as promised, then since the iden- tity o f the resurrectees with us implies our uninterrupted continuance o f existence, our dissolution, be it never so thorough, yields no reason to raise

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the spectre o f a race o f imitations that take our place on the appointed d a y -just as the p h o e n i x ' s dissolution yields no reason to suggest that the d a y o f its rising witnesses a p h o e n i x simulacrum.

This response to F l e w i a n skepticism m a y s e e m vulnerable to the f o l l o w i n g criticism:

It fails to recognize that where real substances are the concern, it is a nec- essary truth that dissolution terminates existence. Just as a substance's being red or blue guarantees that the substance is c o l o r e d because 'red' and ' b l u e ' are the n a m e s o f colors, so a substance's being d i s s o l v e d in acid or b u r n e d to ashes guarantees the end o f the s u b s t a n c e s ' s existence because 'dissolved in acid' and ' b u r n e d to ashes' are existence-termination expressions. Thus, to say that a l t h o u g h a substance has been d i s s o l v e d or b u r n e d to ashes, its existence m a y not be at an end, is like s a y i n g that a l t h o u g h a substance is red or blue, it m a y not be colored: both pronounce- ments involve antilogy. As a substance's being blue but n o t colored is inconceivable, a substance's being burned to ashes and continuing to exist is inconceivable. The F l e w i a n septic is, therefore, correct: a n y future race o f alleged resurrectees cannot be us, but at best o n l y imitations o f us.

A rejoinder to this criticism is the following: The criticism a s s u m e s that if a truth is logically necessary, it can a d m i t o f no exceptions; so that i f the truth o f the proposition ' T h e dissolution o f a real substance terminates its e x i s t e n c e ' is logically necessary, it is also universal, covering all real substances. There are, however, logically nec- essary truths that e m b r a c e exceptions, as W i t t g e n s t e i n ' s w o r k v a l u a b l y shows. A sentence f r o m Philosophical Investigations provides an example: 'In a horse-race the horses generally run as fast as t h e y can'.8

Thus, e v e n i f the proposition in question is l o g i c a l l y necessary, it m a y not e n c o m p a s s all real substances. The cirticism under e x a m i n a t i o n does n o t establish that the proposition is a universal rather t h a n a general logical truth; it contents itself with m e r e l y c o m p a r i n g the proposition to one that is universal. Until universality is established, no reason has been a d v a n c e d to reject the view that, t h o u g h cabins and cabbages cease to exist in their dissolution, kings and c o m m o n e r s do not, and so may, like the phoenix, rise to a n e w life.

I will c o n c l u d e this essay w i t h a b r i e f e x a m i n a t i o n o f an a r g u m e n t that, if successful, w o u l d validate F l e w ' s c l a i m that a future race purporting to be our resurrected selves can at best be o n l y our simulacra. B a s e d on B e r n a r d W i l l i a m s ' w e l l - k n o w n reduplication argument, it runs this way. The risen race c a n n o t be us b e c a u s e to be us is necessarily to be us. That is, i f it is us, there c a n n o t be e v e n an unrealized possibility that it is not us. But it is pos- sible that a second, e q u a l l y well qualified race rise with the first one. This possibility guarantees that the race that does rise is n o t us, since it is n o t

ONE SHORT SLEEP PAST? 97

necessarily us. As a proponent o f this argument puts the matter, 'Identity is a relation which, if it holds, hold necessarily:

a = b --+ [] ( a = b ) i.e. O ( a ; e b ) --~ a e b

S o . . . the very possibility o f an alternate [contending race] showing up [is] sufficient to defeat the identity claim' .9

Perhaps it is enough o f a reply to this argument to point out that its modal mainspring has amusing applications. For example, the woman beside w h o m I awakened in bed this morning is not m y wife, since she is possibly not m y wife, since it is possible that during the night m y wife split (I mean, under- went 'mitosis'), resulting in two equally well qualified contenders for my- wifehood. Fortunately for me she did not undergo this process, for I am, in rather late middle age, b e y o n d the conduct o f a m e n a g e a trois. Even so, it is distressing to learn that this w o m a n is not m y wife because she is not nec- essarily m y wife.

Perhaps it will be thought that she is necessarily m y wife because it is not possible that m y wife have 'mitosed' during the night. But if that is so, the impossibility is to be explained in terms o f the kind o f things human beings are. I f modal logic is willing to settle for this, then a believer in the doctrine o f resurrection can defend his belief by observing that, just as it is impos- sible that Herbert's wife undergo mitosis because she is o f a non-mitotic kind, so it is impossible, that a second 'contending' race rise because G o d ' s promise and p o w e r guarantee an afterworld free o f Williamsian reduplica- tion. Indeed, the believer might add that one can be even more assured o f the eschatological than o f the domestic case because in natural kinds muta- tion and anomalies are not unknown but o f G o d ' s word there can be no default.

Historical afterword

Before the procurator o f Judaea, St Paul declared, 'I hold the same hope in G o d as [the Pharisees] do that there will be a resurrection o f good men and bad men alike' (Acts 24:15). Reflecting on this hope John L o c k e conceived I think the proto-problem o f personal identity, the urperplexity that, with L o c k e ' s own classic assistance, blossomed into the present b o d y o f litera- ture on the subject, when he observed that 'He that shall, with a little atten- tion, reflect on the Resurrection and consider that divine justice shall bring to judgment, at the last day, the very same persons to be happy or miserable in the other who did well or ill in this life, will find it perhaps not easy to resolve with himself what makes the same man or wherein identit3, consists'

98 R.T. HERBERT

(An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. I, Ch. IV, Sec. 5). It seems that from Locke's time to the present most discussion o f 'what makes the same man' ignores the question's root in the 'hope in God' shared by Paul and the Pharisees. It seems all who tackle Locke's question would do well to r e m e m b e r the apothegm 'The Bible is not man's theology, but God's anthropology'. If by God's decree each of the human kind is, after a period o f nothingness, to be brought to judgment at the last day, then in God's con- ception and intention human kind is a race o f one-gap-inclusive creatures whose identities are even less threatened by Williamsian reduplication in their resurrected lives than by fission before they die. Reduplication appears to be a possibility only if the identity question is prized away from its reli- gious doctrinal setting, and that setting forgotten. 1~ Once that is done, once the concept o f a human being has been secularized, all manner o f entertain- ing taradiddle seems relevant to the question o f what makes the same man: resurrectees being mere unhuman replicas o f us because they lack our pre- m o r t e m pasts, Locke's prince and cobbler switching identities, H.G. Wells's Egbert Elvesham somehow inducing the same reciprocation with his victim, Edward Eden, human fission producing the heirs o f a very hardluck parent, humans fusing into unimaginable mongrels, surgeons o f Martian guile and skill implanting others' brains in our heads, and so on. But once it is recalled that the original setting o f Locke's identity question is the aforementioned Pharisaic hope in God, it m a y then be understood that the putatively divine intentional element in the concept human being makes us, in 'God's anthro- pology' indefeasibly phoenix-like. One m a y reject this concept as itself mere taradiddle. But it is unfantastical in at least one respect: the existential seriousness o f the consideration, true or not, that divine justice shall bring us to judgment at the last day. It is a seriousness discernable in another o f Locke's remarks (Essay, IV, III, 6): ' . . . it is evident that he who made us at first begin to subsist here, sensible intelligent beings, and for several years continued us in such a state, can and will restore us to the like state of sensi- bility in another world and make us capable there to receive the retribution he has designed to men, according to their doings, in this life'.

Perhaps it is unnecessary to add here that the foregoing pages attempt to resolve the odd perplexity about gappiness Locke's words m a y engender in one who rejects both (in P.T. Geach's phrase) the 'savage superstition' o f mind-body dualism and the scientistic superstition o f body materialism.

Acknowledgment

This paper is developed from m y 'Gappiness and Personal identity', an essay appearing in Faith, Skepticism and Personal Identity. A Festschrift

ONE SHORT SLEEP PAST? 99

for Terence Penelhum, J.J. Macintosh and H.A. Meynell, eds. (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1994).

Notes

1. Essays on the Intellectual Powers o f Man, ed. and abridged A.D Woozley (London: Macmillan, 1941), p. 202.

2. Ibid., p. 203, emphasis added. It is perhaps worth noticing that John Locke, with some of whose views on personal identity Reid is in well-known disagreement, holds a position virtually identical to Reid's regarding continued existence. See Locke, An Essay con- ceming Human Understanding, ed. John W. Yolton (London: Dent, 1965), II.xxvii.29.

3. Reid, Essays, p. 202. 4. Ibid. Like Locke, Reid appears to take the muddled view that a thought (in Locke's

phrase) perishes 'the moment it begins', so that it can have no identity over time (see Locke, Essay, II.xxvii,2).

5. For further discussion of the intermissive see my Paradox and Identio' in Theology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 131-132.

6. Locke, Essay, II.xxvii.2. 7. 'The Possibility of Resurrection'. h~tenTational Journal for Philosophy o f Religion 9

(1978), 118. 8. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953, p. 227. See also Sec. 345, p. 110. 9. J.J. Macintosh, "Reincarnation and Relativized Identity," Religious Studies 25 (1989):

p. 160. I wish to tank Terece Penelhum for calling my attention to this article. 10. Terence Penelhum observes that 'the Christian is not merely someone who thinks life

will go on longer later, but someone who thinks a person is a different sort of being from the one that the unbeliever perceives'. For his views on this matter (with which 1 am in complete agreement) see Faith, Skepticism and Personal Identity, edited by J.J. Macintosh and H.A. Meynell (Calgary: University of Calgary. Press, 1994), see pp. 2 8 9 - 2 9 0 .

Address J b r correspondence: Prof. R.T. Herbert, Department of Philosophy, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1295, USA Phone: (541) 346 5545